Very young, with tightly drawn tannins still covering the black cherry, raspberry and sweet cigar smoke notes. Plenty of guts, with beef bouillon, mesquite, game, hot stones, graphite and spice notes coursing through the finish. Should be very long-lived.--1995 Châteauneuf-du-Pape retrospective. Drink now through 2025. 500 cases made.
Wine Spectator | 97 WS
I like the 1995 Châteauneuf du Pape Hommage A Jacques Perrin considerably more than the 1994, but they’re both largely in the same style aromatically, yet the tannins here are more polished and ripe. A blend of 70% Mourvèdre, 15% Syrah, 10% Grenache, and the rest Counoise brought up in foudre, it offers a full-bodied, ripe, yet always slightly austere style as well as classic Beaucastel gamey, meaty wildness in its ripe dark fruits, black olive, pepper, and garrigue aromas and flavors. This is classic, old school, focused, structured Châteauneuf all the way. It’s fully mature yet has another decade of longevity.
Jeb Dunnuck | 96 JD
The 1995 remains tight, backward, and far less evolved than the 1998. The dense inky purple color is accompanied by a floral, blueberry, mineral, and licorice-dominated bouquet. Huge and formidably endowed, but closed, tannic, and backward, it will be at its apogee between 2010-2030.
Robert Parker | 96 RP
Saturated ruby-red. High-pitched, mourvedre-dominated aromas of blackberry, shoe polish and licorice, with a lightly floral topnote. Very dense and very primary, with an intense spiciness at its core. Quite powerfully structured, even austere, and perhaps already shutting down. Finishes with huge but even palate-coating tannins and great length. This will age in bottle for many years. The best red wine I tasted from bottle during my time in the Southern Rhône in December 1998.
Vinous Media | 94 VM
Particularly funky aromatic profile, plenty of hung game here but it doesn't dominate the aromatics. A little menthol and leaf tea. Full-bodied, a little farmyardy. Tannins are quite tight, and there's a touch of bitterness on the finish. There's interest here, complexity, and it's very Rhône, but it doesn't have the purity of later vintages. Drinking Window 2020 - 2024.
Decanter | 93 DEC
(Châteauneuf du Pape “Hommage à Jacques Perrin”- Château de Beaucastel) The 1995 vintage of the Hommage à Jacques Perrin is thirteen percent alcohol, and this makes a tremendous difference in terms of both structure and purity in the wine. The overtly glossy fruit of riper vintages like 2007 is nowhere to be found here, but this wine is also still pretty bound up in its structure at age twenty-one and will need more bottle age to fully blossom. The bouquet offers up a complex blend of cassis, dark berries, roasted game, tree bark, woodsmoke, pepper and cedar. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and starting to develop the complexity of maturity, with a good core, still some backend tannin to resolve and good, but hardly exceptional length on the focused finish. This is a very good bottle in the making, but it is not in the same, otherworldly league as 1989 Hommage and does not seem a big step up from the regular bottling at Beaucastel in this vintage. (Drink between 2020-2045).
John Gilman | 92 JG
